Miles City Meeting III

Meeting Summary

Miles City Sage Grouse Local Working Group

April 26, 2004

Welcome/Introduction

Anne Cossitt welcomed the group and reviewed the agenda, which included developing local
strategies for weeds and power lines/generation facilities.

"Listing" Update

Lou Hanebury of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) provided an overview of the process for
listing species under the Endangered Species Act. On April 21, 2004, FWS announced its "90 day
finding" after completing an evaluation of three petitions to list the greater sage-grouse range
wide as either threatened or endangered. The Service determined that the petitions and other
available information provide substantial biological information indicating that further review of
the status of the species is warranted.

Based on the status review, the Service will make one of three possible determinations by end of
December 2004 or early 2005:

Listing is not warranted - in which case no further action will be taken.

Listing as threatened or endangered is warranted. In this case, the Service will publish a
proposal to list. Generally, there is a one-year period between the time a species is proposed and
the final decision.

Listing is warranted but precluded. This means the species is added to the federal list of
candidate species, and the proposal to list is deferred. A warranted but precluded finding requires
subsequent annual reviews of the finding until such time as either a listing proposal is published,
or a not warranted finding is made based on new information.

Questions/comments from participants included:

What are the FWS wildlife refuges in Montana doing to address the concerns about listing? Would
they provide good prototypes for the local working groups to follow?

Have any other states yet submitted their plans to FWS and have they been reviewed by PECE
compliance?

It's unfair to have us in Montana and Wyoming included in the listing with all of the other
states where the problems are much worse.

Follow-up: Lou Hanebury said he would follow up on the questions raised.

The deadline for new information on the status review is June 21. (Note: it was suggested at
other local working group meetings in Dillon and Glasgow that the local working groups provide FWS
with a status report of their work.)

Follow-up: Anne Cossitt will draft a status update to send to FWS on behalf of the
Miles City local working group.

Noxious Weed Management

Cossitt briefly reviewed the description of the noxious weed issues related to sage grouse
habitat (which begins on page 62 of the draft plan issued March 2004). The group was then asked to
review conservation actions for noxious weeds (beginning on page 63 of the draft plan).
Participants were asked to work in small groups to answer four questions for each conservation
action:

What is already being done?

Who would take the actions (what would landowners do? Agencies? Others?)
What would be the timeframe for the action (When would it start? When would it be completed?
Or would it be ongoing?)

What resources would be needed to accomplish the action?

Participants were also asked to identify resources to answer any questions they couldn't
address (e.g., information sources, etc.)

Participants' recommendations on conservation actions in the draft state plan for noxious weeds
are as follows:

Recommendation: There is already a fair amount of mapped data. Work being done by BLM, counties,
state agencies, and coal and energy companies should be compiled. The Montana Natural Resource
Information Systems (NRIS) already houses much of this information. Jim Larsen (NRIS) in Columbus,
Montana would be a good contact for this.

Goal 2: Conservation Action # 1. Develop habitat-specific weed management plans
for known sage grouse ranges, using the inventory and map information developed in the action
described above.

Recommendation: It would be good to have some additional information on when is the best time to
treat weeds (best time for sage grouse concerns). Need to identify what may be toxic to sage grouse
and/or sage brush.

·Recommendation: County weed boards and the weed "Trust Fund" are already involved in this
effort. Landowners can identify problem areas. Agencies can provide land management area expertise
and perhaps some funding to help address weeds. Overall, money is needed to address this problem,
but funding is difficult to come by. It would be good to develop a priority list of problem weeds
for sage grouse habitat. The effort would need to be ongoing.

Conservation Actions 4-8: Providing more education and disseminating information is critical.
The BLM and USFS are developing road management plans and should consider effects on sage grouse
habitat in these plans.

Goal 5: Ensure that land managers and users (general public) are educated about
the threat noxious weeds pose to native plant communities and work together to find appropriate
management solutions. (7 conservation actions)

Recommendations:

Conservation Actions 1,2,3,4,6,7: Already in place via the state weed plan, Montana Weed
Control Association, and the Trust fund from vehicle license fees. Recommend that data collection
be standardized and better information sharing and coordination among entities collecting
data.

Conservation Action 5 (Monitoring and follow-up procedures) Needs to be improved. Need money
and more personnel. The mining industry is regulated and has legal responsibilities for monitoring.
Mining industry is experienced and provides a good example. Documentation of monitoring and
follow-up throughout the area (not just on mining properties) will take continued involvement of
all parties. Carla Hoopes at MSU was identified as a good resource for noxious weed education and
awareness program.

Recommendations: Weeds are relatively contained in this part of Montana. Need for integrated
weed management. Special areas of concern include riparian areas. Need to stop new infestations
before they get out of hand. Landowners are/can be the first line of defense with spraying and
other controls. Agencies can provide resources. Resources could include cost-sharing (sharing
equipment) and research into better, safer products.

Goal 7: Provide the necessary funding mechanisms and dedicated labor to act
immediately when new infestations are identified within sage grouse habitat.

Recommendations: Weeds are not a major problem in sagebrush areas, however the list of weeds for
landowners to identify is likely to increase. Agencies, including FWP should provide weed control
incentives; perhaps consider a habitat enhancement stamp to provide funding for such
incentives.

Summary of Group Recommendations: Cossitt asked the group if there were any items
listed that someone did not agree with or had special concerns about. The following issues were
identified:

One of the small group recommendations was for energy companies to assist more financially with
weed problems. Energy company representatives present at the meeting indicated that they are
already required to address direct effects of their operations on weeds, and they would want to
limit energy company funding to effects directly tied to energy development.

Financial resources are inadequate now to address the problem and don't see any change for that
in the future.

Indian tribes face special issues for funding to address issues like weeds.

Power Lines and Generation Facilities

Cossitt briefly reviewed the description of power line issues related to sage grouse habitat
(which begins on page 67 of the draft plan issued March 2004). The group was then asked to review
conservation actions in small groups and make recommendations for actions similar to the exercise
for noxious weeds.

Participants' recommendations on conservation actions in the draft state plan for power lines
and generation facilities are as follows:

Goal 1: Minimize the impacts of power lines on sage grouse and sagebrush habitats.
Issue area: Addressing existing power lines

Recommendations/Comments: Addressing issues on existing power lines will be more problematic
than addressing issues on new lines, at least it will be problematic to totally relocate or bury
existing lines.

Goal 1. Issue Area: Addressing new power lines
Recommendations: Focus on developing power line route plans before construction. Include
options for alternative energy sources.

Goal 1. Issue Area: Existing power lines causing consistent or significant
collision mortality.
Recommendation/Comments: Question of how to document "consistent or significant collision
mortality." If problems are documented and verified, solutions should be via a coordinated approach
with utilities, agencies, and landowners.

Recommendations: Fossil fuel generation facilities in this area are primarily coal-based.
Recommendations included identifying the footprint of any proposed facility (or expansion to
existing facility) and identifying impacts and mitigation measures for sage grouse.

Other Follow-up

Participants indicated that the timing restrictions for breeding were wrong in the draft plan.
The breeding period should cover from March 1 through June 15, not March 1 through May 15.

Wrap-up

Cossitt asked the group if they had any suggestions for making the upcoming meetings more
productive or useful, or if they had other suggestions regarding the newsletter, or any other
suggestion. There were no comments on the newsletter. Suggestion for upcoming meetings was to
include some discussion of EQIP and other programs, such as Pheasants Forever (try Yellowstone
Chapter out of Billings. There were no suggestions for changing the meeting format.

The following recommendations were made for inviting people to upcoming meetings dealing with
specific topics:

Topic

Invite

Follow-up: Cossitt Consulting will compile the work of this group meeting on
conservation actions and begin to provide more detail for assuring that the conservation actions
will measure up to the FWS PECE criteria (Policy for Evaluating Conservation Effectiveness). The
updated version will then be routed to local working group participants for review.